If the stone could speak searching for the meaning of stonehenge

The first glimpse often comes from the road.Blurring past on the A303 thoroughfare that cuts heedlessly almost across the monument's very entrance,Stonehenge appears as a cluster of insignificant protrusions on the big,otherwise featureless plain,and yet,even from this profane and glancing vantage,the great-shouldered silhouette is so unmistakably prehistoric that the effect is momentarily of a time wrap cracking onto a lost world.


Up close,amid the confusion of broken and standing stones,it still seems smaller than its reputation,notwithstanding the obvious feat represented by the erection of the famous sarsen stones,the largest weighs as much as 50 tons.Unique today,Stonehenge was probably also unique in its own time,some 4500 years ago-a stone monument modeled on timber precedents.Indeed,its massive lintels are bound to their uprights by mortise-and tenon joints taken straight from carpentry,an eloquent indication of just how radically new this hybrid monument must have been.It is this newness,this assured awareness that nothing like it had existed before,this revelatory quality,this is still palpable in its ruined stones.The people who built Stonehenge had discovered something hitherto unknown,hit upon some truth,turned a corner-there is no doubt that the purposefully placed stones are fraught with meaning.



But what in fact do they mean?Despite countless theories offered over centuries,no one knows.Stonehenge is the most famous relic of prehistory in Europe and one of the best known,most contemplated monuments in the world-and we have no clear idea what the people who built it actually used it for.In the past ,archaeologists sought to crack this enigma by wringing every fact they could from the stones themselves,subjecting their contours,marks,and even shadows to scrutiny.Recently,though,the search has led investigators farther afield,away from Stonehenge itself to the remains of a nearby Neolithic village on the one hand,and on the other to a craggy mountain peak in southwestern Wales.While no definitive answer has yet emerged,these two very different searches-in-progress have stirred tantalizing new possibilities.



Stonehenge arose from a rich tradition of equally enigmatic structures.Henges-circular banks of earth paralleled by an internal ditch-earth barrows and mounds,circular timber structures,monoliths,and circles and horseshoes of stone were all common throughout Neolithic Britain and part of continentak Europe.(Strictly speaking,Stonehenge is not,as its name implies,a henge,because the position of its bank and ditch are reversed.)At different stages of its evolution Stonehenge reflected many of there traditions.The first certain structural stones of Stonehenge,the bluestones,which were floated,dragged,and hauled from Wales,most likely arrive sometime before 2500 B.C. The giant sarsens followed,filling out the monument,which was at some point linked by a avenue to the River Avon.Stonehenge,then,is the culmination of a dynamic evolution,the pre-stone earthworks thrown up in grassland probably embodied different beliefs than the late monument of stone that was resolutely connected to water.Standing within the collapse circlesmitis not easy to make out the monument's original blue-print.Easier to imagine are the actions that lie behind it,the planning and engineering,the diplomacy required to negotiate transportation of stones through differnet territories,the logistical maneuvering to supply and equip a labor force,the ability to cajole,inspire,or compel able-bodied men to leave their animals,fields,and hunting grounds-in short,the many necessary human acts that we still recognize,although we know little about who these early Britons were,how they were organized,or what language they spoke.We do know that some were farmers and pastoralists,and that they had long since begun the task of domesticating their landscape,making inroads into the ancient birch,pine ,and hazel forests.Skeletal renains indicate that despite physically demand lives,the people of Neolithic Britain were more lightly built than us.Their relative lack of dental decay suggests a diet low in carbohydrates,and although life expectancies are difficult to calculate,people seem,overall,to have enjoyed good health.Then as now,life held unexpected hazards.Five to 6 percent of there populations showed massive blunt-force trauma to the crania,according to Michael Wysocki,a senior lecturer in forensic and investigative science at the University of Central Lancashire.This was equally the case between male and female.Explanations for this trauma range from ritualized violence to the possibility that life of the era was simply brutal.


Recently,dramatic and wholly chance discoveries have provided biographical outlines of individual men.In 2002 archaeologists working on Boscombe Down,on the east side of the Avon,two and a half miles southeast of stonehenge,unearthed two burials dated at between 2500 and 2300 B.C.They contained the remains of a 35-45-years-old man whose leg had been badly damaged-he would have walked with a horrific limp-and a younger relative,perhaps his son.The old man's grave contained the richest burial goods of the era found in Britain,gold jewelry for hair,copper knives,flint tools,two archer's wrist guards of polished stone, a cushion stone for working mental,along with pottery of the distinctive Beaker style common at the time in continental Europe but not in Britain.Chemical analysis of the tooth enamel of both men gave startling results.The younger man was from the local chalk country of Wessex,the older man,dubbed the Amesbury Archer,came from the foothills of the Alps in the region of what is now Switzerland and Germany.I suppose it was inevitable said Andrew Firzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology,who conducted the excavation,with a wan smile,showing me a cartoon depicting Stonehenge flying a Germany flag.The hard facts suggest a romantic story.Migrating from Europe,with his advanced pottery and his skills in metalworking,the archer had made good in Wessex,acquiring considerable wealth and status along with a family.




One year after the discovery of the Archer and his companion,and less than a quarter mile away,construction workers laying pipe stumbled on yet another grave from roughly the same period,this one containing the remains of seven individuals,at least four of whom were males,also appreantly related and,like the Archer,not native to the area.Analysis of the premolars and molars of the three adults revealed,according to Fitzpatrick,that they were in one place up to the age of six,and in another up to the age of thirteen.Matchers for the place of infancy include northwestern Britain,Wals,or Brittany.The larger point is not where they came from Fitzpatrick emphasized,it's that people of the era traveled.This is the best example of prehistoric migration in Europe yet found.